Recent posts

#61
Design / Incentives / Game Theory / drivechain
Last post by zack - May 17, 2016, 03:40:33 PM
Paul Sztorc made this video about how blockchains can interact destructively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OOKgTSrITs&list=PLw8-6ARlyVciMH79ZyLOpImsMug3LgNc4

His central argument: when miners allow the creation of a sidechain, they need to use the same caution as a soft-fork.
Support for this argument:
* Since oracles are paid by trading fees, sidechains create a free-rider problem. Participants on the sidechain can bet in hivemind markets without paying fees.
* It is possible to make a sidechain for stealing bitcoins from the main chain.

His arguments apply to alt-coins in the same way they apply to sidechains.
It is impossible for bitcoin miners to stop someone from creating an altcoin.

At this point it would seem that blockchain prediction markets are an impossible goal.
Anyone can make an altcoin to ruin it for everyone.
Read a little more, hope is not lost.

=== Focusing on the "free rider" problem.

Paul has previously claimed that hivemind will solve the free rider problem in general. He talks about it on page 14 of the applications document: http://bitcoinhivemind.com/papers/3_PM_Applications.pdf

Here is a meme illustrating Paul's contradictory claims.


Flying Fox is being designed under the assumption that Truthcoin dominant assurance contracts do solve the free rider problem. So we don't collect fees from gamblers at all. Instead, a dominant assurance contract is used to raise money to pay the oracle to make a new market.

===Focusing on the "sidechain steals 1% of coins" problem.

If bitcoin was a flavor of delegated proof of stake consensus, like Flying Fox, then the sidechain attack to steal 1% of the coins would fail.
If some miners started participating in an attack like this, the users would stop delegating power to those miners.
Ambiguity isn't enough to protect the miners.
Users will demand the miner include a transaction from the designated frozen list. Failure to comply means the miner will lose their power.
Even if there is only a 10% chance that a miner is participating in an attack, that would be enough justification for people to stop delegating power to that miner.

Paul has made a very convincing argument for adding DPOS characteristics to blockchain consensus.
#62
Off Topic / Re: I am selling Augur REP
Last post by zack - May 17, 2016, 02:24:56 PM
I don't trust the price on that website because they don't have any markets. Even gatecoin is dead now.
I have consistently been selling my rep at a lower price than that, and I am not finding as many customers as I want.

I can't afford to pay anything above 0.003 for rep, because I already have too much, and am struggling to sell.
#63
Off Topic / Re: I am selling Augur REP
Last post by sflicht - May 17, 2016, 01:35:00 AM
Zack, are you still interested in buying REP? I have a decent amount I'm willing to sell -- make me an offer. (I assume you were joking about paying Paul at a price of 0.0001, since I think market rate is a little higher right now (http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/augur/).
#64
General / Re: How can I get some truthco...
Last post by zack - May 14, 2016, 04:24:54 PM
A reporter is someone who owns votecoins for a branch.
Each branch has a different flavor of votecoins.
If you want to be a reporter for a branch, then you buy some votecoins for that branch.
Votecoins are similar to reputation from the Augur project.
Augur had a crowdsale to distribute their reputation.

For a branch to decide who won a bet, it asks the votecoin holders.
The votecoin holders participate in a game designed to extract the truth from them.
This game is more accurate if there are lots of people owning small amounts of rep rather than a few people owning a majority.

Since the Augur rep is worth over $100 million, I would be very surprised if Paul Sztorc decides not to have a crowdsale.
Hivemind has the bitcoin community behind it, which is bigger than the ethereum community.
The world record for a crowdsale was $113 million.
Hivemind could raise much more than that, which would bring a lot of attention to the project.

That is such a large amount of money to refuse.
But, his motivations in building truthcoin so far has been ideological rather than financial.
He wants us to be wise and honest.
If the votecoin crowdsale somehow interfered with his goal of improving the world, he might avoid the crowdsale.

I plan to have a crowdsale to distribute the votecoins for Flying Fox.
#65
General / Re: How can I get some truthco...
Last post by bacchist - May 13, 2016, 12:43:51 PM
Quote from: psztorc on April 27, 2016, 04:39:33 PM
There will exist a mechanism to transform BTC in to Truthcoin's "CashCoin". So, you should just buy more BTC.

Unless you would like to become a reporter. I haven't decided how the VoteCoins will be distributed. It wouldn't hurt if you helped with the code.

What is a reporter, exactly? Are they the voters?

I've been trying to get a sense of how it will work. Voting users are associated with Branches? How are these entities organized and how would I go about joining one?
#66
Off Topic / Re: I am selling Augur REP
Last post by psztorc - May 10, 2016, 03:55:12 AM
Haha, I was never offered nor given any Rep.
#67
Off Topic / Re: I am selling Augur REP
Last post by zack - May 09, 2016, 02:40:13 PM
edit: Paul doesn't actually have rep. sorry.

I'm pretty sure Paul Sztorc has over 10,000 rep.
Unless he already sold them.

I would pay 10 bitcoin for your rep.

All you have to do is write a comment here saying you want to sell to me, and write a bitcoin address that you control, I will handle everything else.
#68
General / Re: How can I get some truthco...
Last post by zack - April 28, 2016, 11:39:08 PM
For bitcoin hivemind:

Cashcoin IS bitcoin. Since there are 21 million bitcoin, if we moved all the bitcoin onto truthcoin, then there would be 21 million cashcoin.
If you have 1 bitcoin, you could move it from the bitcoin blockchain to the truthcoin blockchain, and it transforms into a cashcoin. So you no longer have any bitcoins, but you have 1 cashcoin. Then when you are done on truthcoin, you can move your cashcoins back to the bitcoin blockchain, and they become bitcoins again.

Truthcoin is going to be merge mined, similar to how namecoins works.
So it is being secured by the same hash power that secures the bitcoin blockchain.

A big limitation of merge mining is that if you have less than 1/2 the total mining hashpower supporting you, it is cheap to cause forks on your blockchain. Miners are paid to support you, but it wasn't enough for namecoin.

It isn't clear if namecoin is successful at merge mining. Their difficulty is 26 billion vs bitcoins difficulty of 179 billion, about 15% of the bitcoin miners are merge mined with truthcoin.

namecoin is securing domain names. Do you trust the bitcoin miners not to collude to hold your domain name for ransom?

truthcoin is securing the outcomes of predictions that people are betting large amounts of money on. Do you trust the bitcoin miners not to collude to hold the money in your prediction market for ransom?

Look at page 28 of the white paper near the bottom: http://bitcoinhivemind.com/papers/truthcoin-whitepaper.pdf

For Augur: ether are the cashcoin. https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/04/10/the-issuance-model-in-ethereum/
Currently it is secured by POW, but they are planning to move to POS.

For Flying Fox: flying foxes are the cashcoin. It has a new distribution method.  https://github.com/BumblebeeBat/FlyingFox/blob/master/docs/coin_creation.md
https://github.com/BumblebeeBat/FlyingFox/blob/master/docs/coin_creation_price.md
Flying Fox is secured by a PoS consensus I invented that is based around the idea of payment channels.
https://github.com/BumblebeeBat/FlyingFox/blob/master/docs/lightning_consensus.md
#69
General / Re: How can I get some truthco...
Last post by psztorc - April 28, 2016, 11:10:20 PM
Quote from: blackhatzw on April 28, 2016, 02:51:41 AM
Quote from: psztorc on April 27, 2016, 04:39:33 PM
There will exist a mechanism to transform BTC in to Truthcoin's "CashCoin". So, you should just buy more BTC.

Unless you would like to become a reporter. I haven't decided how the VoteCoins will be distributed. It wouldn't hurt if you helped with the code.

Thanks for explanation, how many CashCoin exist totally? How will CashCoin be distributed?  How to secure the CashCoin's network, is it PoS or new Consensus algorithm? Where can I find the documents about this?

CashCoins *are* Bitcoins. They are two words for the same thing -- when BTC are in Hivemind world, they are labeled CashCoins to distinguish them from Votecoins.
#70
General / Re: How can I get some truthco...
Last post by blackhatzw - April 28, 2016, 02:51:41 AM
Quote from: psztorc on April 27, 2016, 04:39:33 PM
There will exist a mechanism to transform BTC in to Truthcoin's "CashCoin". So, you should just buy more BTC.

Unless you would like to become a reporter. I haven't decided how the VoteCoins will be distributed. It wouldn't hurt if you helped with the code.

Thanks for explanation, how many CashCoin exist totally? How will CashCoin be distributed?  How to secure the CashCoin's network, is it PoS or new Consensus algorithm? Where can I find the documents about this?